Cisco Site Reliability Engineer interview questions

I had a disappointing interview process for a CISCO position in Prague. It was a very long process with several interviews canceled or rescheduled that lasted from October until January, but that's not a problem at all. The most strange thing for me was their motivation for not selecting me - they said it's because of my part-time freelance projects, stipulating that they might affect my productivity within the company (I specifically mentioned that they take a maximum of 5 hours per week and do not affect my full-time job in any way). For me it is astonishing (not in the good sense) to realize that a company like CISCO would not encourage something like freelance work, that anyone is free to do in their free time, especially if it would add more value to the individual in their specific field in the end. I have learned a whole lot from those projects... This makes me think that the work/life balance isn't very balanced. I hope the above wasn't their true reason for not selecting me.